“That’s nice.” Arthur trotted a few paces at his side, then to Lance’s surprise put out a hand and pulled Balana’s rein to draw her to a halt. The clatter of iron on stone died away to utter silence. “But where are these people of yours? This place is deserted.”
Lance sprang to the ground. Riding proved to have been easier than standing and he staggered, clutching at Balana’s mane for support. “Oh, no. This can’t be. It was only two nights—just two nights.”
“What was?”
“That I was away. We were starving. I promised I’d hunt, and bring back something to eat.”
“Things were as desperate as that?”
“You’ve no idea. Summer didn’t come this year. It only arrived...” Lance choked faintly, and once more told the impossible truth. “It only arrived with you. They can’t all be dead, Art. They can’t be gone.”
Arthur swung easily down from the saddle. If he noticed that his new friend had cut short his name and dispensed with honorifics, he gave no sign. “Of course they’re not dead.” He looked around. “We’ll find them. Tell me—if there was no food here, and you’ve been gone for two nights, have you had nothing to eat yourself in all that time?”
“No. I chased a hare, but she turned into an old woman and gave me a fish and the sword.”
“Oh, Gods.” Arthur took a firm grip on his arm and glanced anxiously back up the track. “Father Ector! Guy! Hurry up, will you? This poor prince has gone mad for want of food.”
The rest of the party clattered up behind them. Lance drew a breath to try and explain himself, then lost it at the sight of a ragged figure in robes bursting forth from the praetorium.
He braced up. Any sign of life was a relief, but he was surely in deadly trouble with Father Tomas now. “I’m sorry,” he began, and tried to put together in his mind the story he’d just offered Arthur, the one about the fish and the witch and the hare. “I’m sorry, Father. I only meant to go up and fetch the frozen deer Cerys and Dana found dead on the path. Oh, there you are, Dana,” he added distractedly, as the girl emerged from behind Tomas, overtook him, dashed across the courtyard and flung her arms around Lance’s waist. She was still coughing, and wrapped in Elena’s cloak. He patted her hair. “But it came back to life and ran away. I must tell the men not to hunt the white hart, Tomas. Where are all the men?”
Tomas stumbled to a halt. His eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. “Where do you think they are?” he demanded in a croak. “Every able-bodied man—and woman, for that matter—is out on the moortops, looking for you.” At last the old man noticed the visitors. “You see,” he offered helplessly, spreading his hands, “once upon a time we had a king. A queen too, and although an unrepenting heathen, she doctored and cared for us, brought babies into the world with her own hands. We had this boy’s brothers and sisters too, a horde of them, barely tamed puppies, but good. All gone, all gone. And these two long nights past, we thought our Lance was lost to us too. He’s all we have left, you see.”
Ector and Gaius dismounted. “You are priest of this village?” Ector asked gruffly, surveying the dilapidated house and outbuildings, the various infants who had crept out of unknown hiding-places and followed Dana’s lead in attaching themselves to Lance however they could. “A priest of Christ?”
“Alas for me! I came from the shrine at Brocolitia. I have known better days. If you be heathen sons of Mithras, slay me if you will.”
“Good grief, no.” Stiffly Ector went down on his knees. “My name is Ectorius, a stranger here, but a Christian like yourself, and no cause for fear. These are my sons, Gaius and Arthur, just as...” He tugged sharply at Guy’s swordbelt. Arthur was out of reach of anything more than a ferocious look, but both he and his foster-brother guiltily knelt too. “Just as devout as I am. God be with you, Father Tomas.”
“And also with you.” The old man’s response was reflexive. His face was a blank of astonishment. Lance had gone down at Arthur’s side, not in an access of humility but under the weight of children. He felt extremely strange.We thought we’d lost our Lance. All the men and women out looking for you. All we have left, you see.The shepherd’s little boy, fat somehow despite the endless winter, tried to climb into his arms. Lance tried to help, and instead went down sideways, making the infant shriek and the flagstones change place with the blessed sun reborn.
Arthur stared up in horror at his guardian. “None of your doing, Bearcub,” Ector said, taking pity. “The boy’s half dead of hunger, that’s all. Gaius, carry him indoors—but take that sword from him first, before he runs himself through.”
“Should I keep it safe for him, Father?”
“No, you weasel. Take it with him and set it by his bed.” Ector turned to the nearest of his grooms and lowered his voice: the skin-and-bones priest and all the wide-eyed children of the settlement were gazing at him and his party as if they’d tumbled from heaven. “Take gold and ride back to the last decent-sized town we came through—Corstopitum, was it, the place by the river? Buy grain and meat, and tell them to have a dozen ewes and a tup sent up here to replenish these flocks. Oh, and bring wine. Damned if I’m drinking whatever goat’s piss these poor bastards have been living on. Well, what are you waiting for? Go!”
Chapter Eight
“You shouldn’t have let him. I said we’d provide for you tonight.”
“Well, we’ve quartered ourselves upon you. Sir Ector is an old Roman. If you garrison your troops upon a town, unless there’s some political point to be made, you don’t expect them to feed you. It’s not just for tonight, you see. We’re badly in need of rest, and we hope to stay longer.” Arthur tucked his foot up onto a bar of the high stool against the wall near Lance’s bed. He’d made himself very comfortable there, while visitors came and went.
Far more of them than Lance could have anticipated. Figures from his childhood: the blacksmith, the farmers who worked Ban’s fields, the butcher, enduring presences to whom Lance and his siblings had been little more than a nuisance in their younger years, children underfoot—all of them had come, singly or in groups, as they arrived back from their search on the moors. They’d stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed or sat boldly upon it, each according to his nature. None of them had said much. Lance, who would have expected a clout around the ear for causing false alarms and uproar, was confounded. “Have you been given chambers? Stabling and feed for your horses?”
“Yes, and your housekeeper—Edern, is it?—is busy at this moment preparing an evening meal. Which you may or may not be allowed to attend, so carry on eating your broth.”
He had a nerve, Lance thought. Lance could hear running feet, scufflings and banging doors as Ban’s household rushed to do this imperious newcomer’s bidding. He also had a way of making nobody mind, just as Lance didn’t mind being ordered to eat, or threatened with exclusion from dinner as if he’d been a five year old. He was feeling stronger by the minute, and would soon show this grey-eyed invader who was master in the praetor’s house.
Meanwhile, it was a bone-melting relief to lie here. He’d been laid down carefully in Ban and Elena’s bed, not his own, and Edern’s wife had come clucking and crying to help him out of his clothes. Someone—Gaius, he thought—had placed the marvellous sword in an empty rack, on the wall opposite the bed where he could see it. The earthenware soup bowl was warm in his hands, the deerhound sprawled across his lap a pungent, flea-scratching comfort. “I didn’t faint, you know. Your brother didn’t have to carry me in.”
“Oh, don’t mind Gaius. He’s so much older and uglier than I am, whenever I used to annoy him, he’d hoist me up like a sack of barley and cart me away.”
“Does he still do that now?”
“I’d like to see him try. Just to be correct, he’s my foster brother. Ectorius is my guardian.” Arthur paused delicately. “There’s quite a story there.”
Lance blushed. Did his guest think he wished to pry? “I didn’t ask for it.”
